Yesterday I played a practice round for the Mesquite Am at Conestoga Golf Club. Conestoga is located in Mesquite, in a development by Del Webb. I shot a ton of pictures at the course, but in my not so proud moment as a photographer, I realized the camera was setup wrong. All of my shots for the front nine would likely be bad. Reshoot needed. Stay tuned for an update on the Conestoga image gallery. You will love these holes. Very cool course.

After the practice round, 78 thank you, I headed to the demo day at Casablanca Golf Club. Srixon and Callaway were the two biggest vendors there. Callaway ran a long drive contest for all sorts of groups like men, women, seniors etc. That was fun to watch. Winners received gift certificates to any of the six courses in the tournament rotation.

Following the demo day was the first evening banquet in the giant tent outside the “Casa.” The tournament includes dinner each night and the big tent had roughly 600 people attending. The food was surprisingly good, which must be hard to do when cooking for 600.

Don’t challenge me to Masters trivia. I’ll crush you.

The theme for last night was “Mesquite Masters.” Basically they run some Masters video highlights and have food similar to that in Augusta, Georgia. They ran a 20 question Masters trivia contest for each table. I took the sheet and filled in the answers. One question was odd though, asking who competed in the tournament the most times. I knew that Gary Player overtook Arnold Palmer’s 50 a year or two ago. I knew it was at least 51. Player wasn’t on their list. Arnie and some other players like Jack Nicklaus were. I picked Arnie.

We got that question wrong because they said Doug Ford, who had competed 49 times, held the record for most Masters played in. I was confused.

By missing a question on the quiz, we “tied” with another table and there was a playoff. I went up on stage and went agains another member of the audience. The question was, “how many dimples are on a regular golf ball.” When they stuck the microphone in my face, I said “that depends on which model. For instance a Titleist ProV1 has 392 and a ProV1x has 332. But that was last year’s model.”

The other competitor said, “yeah, 332” and smacked his head. Needless to say they said we won the contest. For my trivia skills I won every person at our table a Masters hat, Masters towel and 2011 Masters magazine. That didn’t suck at all!

Upon getting back to the hotel room, I dug up some Masters stats and found out that Gary Player has played in 52 Masters. Their question was wrong and the best possible answer in their multiple choice quiz was Arnie. I submit that I was 100% for the quiz and that no playoff should have been needed, though I won it anyway…